The Saturdays 'Up'

Chart Peak: 5
YouTube

New girls on the block The Saturdays (Una, Rochelle, Vanessa, Mollie and Frankie) smashed their way into the Top 10 in August with their debut hit 'If This Is Love'... Their 2nd hit 'Up', and addictive pop anthem complete with explosive chorus, shot into the Top 5 in October 2008.

The Sats may have been a new act, but they weren't all newcomers to pop: Frankie Sandford - still a teenager at this point! - was already onto her third chart act, after success with S Club Juniors/S Club 8 and I Dream Featuring Frankie And Calvin. Rochelle Wiseman was also a former S Club Junior and appeared in the I Dream TV series but not on their one hit single. 

The Saturdays were a different and slightly more grown-up proposition, though, an entirely female act who seemed like they might have been intended to take over from the Sugababes and Girls Aloud. Perhaps unfortunately for them those acts weren't quite ready to leave at the time, and the Sats have spent most of the last five years in a slightly odd position, chalking up the big hits on a pretty regular basis and playing sizeable live venues but never quite seeming to be big stars. They don't sell a lot of albums either, even by this decade's standards. Somehow even when they were the biggest girl-group in the country by default, they still
didn't really feel like it. If that sounds negative, it's slightly unfortunate because I actually sort of like the Saturdays. At least they seem like nice people, though the quality of their music is wildly variable. 'Up' is one of the good ones, albeit that it's straight off the Scandinavian production line. According to Wikipedia "The lyrics have been interpreted by music critics to not make sense," but they're set against a sound track that's slightly weird but still melodic. The repetition of a couple of notes gives it wobbly, unsteady quality that might just about fit into the sense of the lyric, if they are indeed talking about wanting to take a relationship to the next level. Well, let's be realistic, they're probably talking about sex aren't they? That makes the lyric "I don't want protection" a bit iffy, to be honest, but at least the rest of the song is fairly incoherent around it so they just about get away with it. It's a shame that this was only their second single and they've never really bettered it since. 

Also appearing on: Now 72, 73, 74, 75, 77 (with Flo Rida), 79, 80, 82, 84 (with Sean Paul), 85, 86
Available on: Chasing Lights (UK Re-Release)